Good Girls and Wicked Witches. Amy M. Davis
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violations of various sections of the Sherman and Clayton acts, sold off their theatre chains.84 Indeed, in the early days at the Disney studio, one of the greatest controlling factors as to which of the studio’s films were released and promoted was the whim of whomever held their distribution contract, and the percertage of money made by the studio from a film’s profits was also determined by how much the distributor felt inclined to pay. Honest distributors paid the agreed-upon percentage, as was stipulated by their contract, and also offered a fair, equitable deal to the studio. Dishonest distributors found ways to shuffle their accounts so as to keep the Disney studio’s share of the profits to themselves for as long as possible.85
The licensing and financial perils of such a system for an independent studio – such as the Disney studio – are readily obvious. The Fleischers were sheltered from the difficulties of distribution by Paramount, which handled the distribution of the Fleischers’ cartoons for them and naturally gave these cartoons preferential treatment in Paramount-owned theatres over the cartoons of other animation studios. Although the Fleischers had to contend with the executives at Paramount when it came to making some of their decisions, the very real, major problems of having to deal with an outside distributor were headaches from which they were protected. An independent studio, such as Disney, was forced to sign contracts with distributors in order to get their cartoons and films shown in enough cinemas for the film to earn any revenue at all, let alone turn a profit for the studio. Furthermore, a part of these contracts could be – and often was – that distributors would be given the right to keep for themselves an agreed-upon percentage of the profits from a cartoon or a film for an extended period of time, thus decreasing the profit margin of the studio which had created the film or cartoon in question. Not only was the potential for fraud great (Disney, for example, probably lost thousands of dollars in the late 1920s and early 1930s thanks to his association with Pat Powers, a distributor in New York City), but there was also the problem, when an independent was dealing with a major studio as its distributor, that the major studio naturally tended to give preferential treatment to their own films over those being produced by an independent studio who had turned to them for distribution.86
The fact that the Fleischers were protected by their association with Paramount from such financial constraints was invaluable to them when it came to attempting to compete with Disney with an animated feature film of their own. The Fleischer Brothers/Paramount animated film Gulliver’s Travels, according to Norman Klein, was a hit at the time of its release during Christmas 1939. Although it has not often been re-released since then, Deneroff asserts that the film was a major influence upon such film-makers as Hayao Miyazaki.87 According to Klein, Paramount wanted the film to be made as “a Fleischer answer to Snow White”,88 thus implying that Gulliver’s Travels was made more as a reaction to Snow White than as a natural progression in animation at Fleischer. Also, although the animation, despite the mix of graphic styles, was good enough, the story as it was presented in the film was not terribly brilliant, and does little to hold the audience’s interest, let alone its attention. Klein sums it up well when he describes Gulliver’s Travels in this way: “The principles of volume and cuteness were observed [in the film]; overall it was more than a competent, if uninspired, effort”.89 Gulliver’s Travels was made at a chaotic time for the Fleischer studio. Brothers Max and Dave Fleischer were no longer on speaking terms, and in the midst of this was the studio’s move to Miami (which Paramount helped finance, even though – or perhaps because – the move represented the troublesome Fleischers’ breakaway from Paramount). Indeed, when Gulliver’s Travels is compared to some of the early planning stages of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a similar mix of styles and similar mistakes were being made by Disney artists. The key differences, however, between the Disney studio’s creation of Snow White and the Fleischer studio’s creation of Gulliver’s Travels, were these: (1) Disney had more time to plan, revise, and discard elements which did not really work within the overall film, and had the luxury of time to work on the visual, story, and sound elements (music, voice, and sound effects) of the film until they were exactly right, whereas Fleischer was working under a fairly tight deadline imposed by Paramount, and had to hurry to meet that deadline; (2) the Disney studio had already divided up into various departments which concentrated on perfecting their own parts within the process: a story department, an effects department (which specialised in all the special effects such as fire, rain, and so forth), and a character animation department, just to name a few; furthermore, it had seen to it that all of its staff were well trained, and that this training was an on-going process; the Fleischer operation was far less organised and compartmentalised, which meant a lack of opportunity for individual artists to improve or perfect their craft; likewise, not only had Fleischer not ensured artistic training amongst its staff, it had traditionally discouraged its artists from seeking fine art training or any other training. As one former Fleischer employee described this situation,
Those people who were quite content with the raw, peasant humor, the bad drawing, the kind of not-too-thought-out timing and the simpleminded stories…that bunch stayed [at Fleischer]. The more adventurous, who really wanted to learn to do a better movie, left [Fleischer]. Every one of them. Nobody stayed who had that urge, because there was no way to make such a picture in New York. So, that marked a schism which exists to this day. And it’s a very strange thing. The people in New York who later went down to Miami to work on Gulliver and Mr Bug Goes To Town, to a man they believed that any time that Max would give a little more time to work, they could have done all that stuff in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs easily, no problem. They had been self-hypnotized so they couldn’t see the exquisite drawing which had nothing to do with their work.90
It’s most damning “review” came from Walt Disney himself, who is said to have commented on the film, “we can do better than that with our second-string animators”.91 Furthermore, Fleischer directors were not likely to encourage any kind of experimentation or innovation on the part of their staff. Michael Barrier, for example, quotes a 1977 interview with Ed Rehberg, who described one of the leading directors at Fleischer (and one of the directors for Gulliver’s Travels), Seymour Kneitel, in this way: Kneitel
“had a stock formula for walks and runs, and you either did it his way or it was wrong. There was never any experimenting. He’d say, “You’re stupid if you do it that way. Don’t you have any more sense than that?” He was that crude.92
Clearly, the work/artistic culture at Fleischer was radically different from the one at Disney. Like many studios, it operated under the belief that animation as a medium was not to be valued, and therefore that large amounts of time, money, and effort were not worth the bother. Unlike some of the other animation studios belonging to the majors, however, it was tightly controlled and used by those in charge, and its artists lacked the freedom or resources to build and improve. Though still working under tight budgets, other studios, which granted their animators more freedom to experiment, achieved better results. One studio which proved that beyond all doubt was the animation unit at Warner Brothers.
Animation’s golden age and the Warner Brothers’ studio
Whilst the Fleischer studio may have failed eventually, another animation studio which operated successfully in competition with Disney during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s was that at Warner Brothers. The Warner Brothers-affiliated cartoons got their start on 28 January 1930, when Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising signed a contract with Leon Schlesinger (who had earlier signed a contract with Warner Brothers to provide them with cartoons), binding them to pass on to him the negative of one sound cartoon each month for three years.93 Dubbed Looney Tunes, an obvious take on the Disney studio’s Silly Symphonies series, these cartoons were to be made within a budget of $4,500 per cartoon for the first year, with the budget to be increased to at least $6,000 per cartoon over the next two years.94 According to Michael Barrier, when the first Looney Tunes cartoon, “Sinkin’ in the Bathtub”, was shown to Jack Warner in April 1930, Warner, after seeing only half of the cartoon, ordered twelve more Looney Tunes from Schlesinger and, on 17 April 1930, Warner decided to exercise Warner Brothers’ option and ordered a further eleven.95
Looney